Now that Thanksgiving has passed in North America my family has moved it's focus onto Christmas. In preparation for creating some new ornaments this year I picked up a package of these Styrofoam balls from the craft store and I decided to decorate each of them differently, and this is the first ornament.

I dug through my fabric stash for some white background fabric and came up with these three patterned fabrics: houndstooth, polka-dot, and a light cream with some screen printed white flowers on it.

I'm gearing up for Thanksgiving and created some projects for a vignette at my house. I applied a design cut out of gold vinyl to a plate, and created a little sign using stamps. Now, I always get a lot of emails and questions about cutting out stamps, so hopefully this tutorial will help you learn some new cutting techniques!

Plate Supplies:

ScanNCut Machine and Accessories (The Spatula & Hook Tools are very handy for this project! Enter to win the set + more below!!!)

1.Insert the cutting mat with gold craft vinyl adhered to it. Download the cut file and load it onto your machine and then add a test cut. When you do a test cut it will cut that out first, and then pause so you can evaluate how it cut out. You can then begin cutting out the design or adjust your settings and do another test cut.

2. After it has finished cutting remove the vinyl from the cutting mat and weed out the negative parts of the vinyl design. It's supper handy to use your hook tool to get out the centers of letters.

3. Cut a piece of transfer paper to be the same size as your design, remove it's backing, and then apply it to your design and rub it firmly so the vinyl will stick to the transfer tape.

4. Remove the transfer paper and the design from the vinyl backing and apply it to the center of the plate. Rub the transfer paper to adhere the vinyl onto the plate and then slowly peel up the transfer paper leaving the vinyl design on the plate.

Sign Instructions:

1. On a piece of cream cardstock stamp out various leaf patterns using different colors of ink. Allow it to dry and then place the paper onto the cutting mat and insert it into the machine. Choose "Scan" then "Direct Cut" and scan in your stamped design.

2. Crop the design selecting just the patterns you want to cut out. Next, click on the "offset" feature button. This is where the magic happens of choosing if you want a border around your stamped image, have it cut right along the edge of the image, or cut inside the edge of the image. Isn't it cool that you get to choose your preference! -I love it!

So for this project I cut the majority of the solid leaf patterns using an "inward offset" of "-0.02" and for the more open stamped images I used "0.00" so it would just around the edge.

Here is how it looks when it's cut out:

Enjoy decorating your home!

#BrotherBloggerBash Giveaway

My friends at Brother ScanNCut is giving one very lucky blog reader a fun prize package! See the details and enter to win below!

Giveaway Duration - November 14th - 15th

Brother prize valued at approximately $70!

Brother prize package includes:

1 set Spatula and Hook tools

1 roll of gold craft vinyl

1 roll of silver craft vinyl

1 roll of black craft vinyl

1 roll of grid transfer paper

Official Rules: To enter to win, just comment below on this blog post by midnight PST on November 15, 2016. By commenting on this blog post you are agreeing to the official rules and you agree to provide your name and mailing address to Erin Bassett and Brother International for prize distribution. Prize fulfillment will be done by Brother International.

Eligibility requirements: Open to USA residents 18 and older only.

A random winner will be chosen via random.org on November 16th, 2016 and contacted that day. If potential prize winner does not claim the prize in 48 hours or forfeits the prize, the prize will be re-awarded. The number of eligible entries received determines the odds of winning. Void where prohibited by law.

Comments are now closed and a winner will be notified.

Disclosure: Erin is a paid consultant and has received products from Brother to evaluate. However, the opinions expressed are entirely her own and based on her use of the products.

This post contains affiliate links. If you buy from these links it won't cost you a penny more but Erin will make a little bit of money (not enough for a pony).

Autumn is my favorite time of year, even if in CA it still feels like summer!

Now, I'm not a big Halloween person, but I do love pumpkins, and cats, and crows, so I decided I'd do an art journal page about that and I used this week's Gelatos® color of the week: Black Licorice.

I started off by sketching out my design...I wanted to keep it in more of a folk art style than a scary Halloween one.

Next, I chopped off a bit of Mango Gelatos and a tiny bit of the Cinnamon. I mashed those up and combined them with some Glass Bead Glitter Gel.

I used that to "paint" in my pumpkin, leaving the features unpainted.

Next I combined the Black Licorice Gelatos and the Glass Bead Glitter Gel and filled in the cat and the crow.

To make the marks on the crow's tail, the cat's whiskers, and mouth I just took a sharp pencil and drew through the Gelatos/Glass Bead Glitter Gel mixture while it was still wet.

I also mixed up a tiny bit of Watermelon Gelatos and Glass Bead Glitter Gel to fill in the ears and nose on the cat and for the pumpkin stem I used Iced Chai Gelatos and Glass Bead Glitter Gel. Once it was all filled in I then I let the whole page dry completely before starting in on the background. Now I knew I wanted to have a darker background, but I also wanted to be able to see the cat and the crow so for the first layer I used the following Gelatos: Snow Cone, Boysenberry, and Metallic Grape.

I used a baby wipe that I had squeezed out as much of the liquid out of as possible to blend out the Gelatos.

After that was dry I added the Black Licorice Gelatos on top of it and blended it out as well.

I than outlined the cat and crow with a Black #199 PITT Artist Pen, and the pumpkin with a Dark Sepia #175. I filled in all the details on the crow, cat, and pumpkin. I then got the idea to add some patterns to the background. Now, because of the waxy finish to the Gelatos you're not able to write on top of it with the finer tipped PITT Artist Pens very easily so I brushed on a thin layer of Gel Medium to seal it in so I could add those details.

I wish you could see the glitter and texture on this page "in real life!" It's really neat!

Disclosure: Erin is a paid consultant and has received products from Faber-Castell to evaluate. However, the opinions expressed are entirely her own and based on her use of the products.

This post contains affiliate links. If you buy from these links it won't cost you a penny more but Erin will make a little bit of money (not enough for a pony).

These fall earrings were really fun to make and I love how they turned out. Often times larger earrings are heavy, but because I paper-mached these they are really light and easy to wear.

To start off with, I used my ScanNCut to cut out this shape out of a thin piece of chipboard...it happens to be a Christmas ornament shape that's built into the machine. Shhhh, don't tell.

Next, I took a lot of layers of ripped up tissue paper and adhered it to the shape with Gel Medium. I allowed it to dry between layers and just continued to build it up to the thickness I wanted.

I even devised a clever way to allow them to dry by bending paperclips and hanging it off of one of my tool baskets.

Next, I mixed up some of the Gelatos Color of the Week, Cinnamon, and a little bit of Glaze and applied it to the earring bases. I allowed it to dry and then repeated that process until it was the desired look I wanted.

After they had thoroughly dried overnight, I took just a tiny bit of the Gold Texture Luxe and applied it to the earrings. Oh how I love Texture Luxe!

I applied it with a damp (not dripping wet) finger to the earrings so that it really just transferred onto the high points of the folds of texture. I also applied it along the edge as well.

I added a few beads and fishhook earrings and voilà, they are ready to wear!

Disclosure: Erin is a paid consultant and has received products from Brother ScanNCut and Faber-Castell to evaluate. However, the opinions expressed are entirely her own and based on her use of the products.

This post contains affiliate links. If you buy from these links it won't cost you a penny more but Erin will make a little bit of money (not enough for a pony).

This week we are using the Gelatos® color of the week: Banana. It has a great tone to it that really sets it apart from other yellows.

For this art journal page I used the Gelatos Mist Maker to make my own Banana Gelatos mist! I took about 1/4" of the Banana Gelatos and placed it on a lid I like to use for mixing because it's shallow, yet has a lip around it to keep liquids in. I mashed the Gelatos down with my pallet knife and then added 2 drip droppers full of water to it and mashed it down some more to get rid of any lumps. Next I added two more droppers of water and then poured it into the spray bottle.

I then sprayed it onto my piece of watercolor paper and blotted it with a paper towel which left a cool pattern on the page. I then held my paper up and brought the spray mist closer to the paper to create concentrated dips onto the paper.

Next I found a picture of our 4 year old Australian Labradoodle, Willow. I trimmed the photo a bit and then sewed around it with my sewing machine.

I then covered the background of the photo with gesso and allowed the gesso to "spill off the photo" visually.

Now, at this point I liked the texture that the sewing gave to the photo, but I decided that I wanted to see the color of the thread so I ended up printing out another copy of this photo, adding the gesso, and then stitching around the photo. I then adhered the photo to the page and then traced around the dog with a Stampers Big Brush Pen in Warm Grey IV #273, smudging it as I went. Next I used a black Pitt Pen to draw sketch lines around her. I then added pops of color by coloring the tennis ball with a Stampers Big Brush Pen in Light Green #171 and using the Snow Cone Gelato on the background as a contrasting color.

The finishing touch was using a PITT Artist Pen with a brush tip to hand letter her name onto the page. Hand lettering on watercolor paper covered in gesso is a bit of a challenge since the paper is so absorbent and the gesso makes it bumpy, but it still has a nice look to it.

Copyright

2004 - 2015, Erin Bassett. Feel free to link to my blog all you would like, but please use a direct link to my site when using my photos (ie: Pinterest, social media, your blog, etc)...and while it's not required, I'd love for you to let me know what & where you post. :) It is NOT permissible to copy or distribute anything else on my site without prior written consent.